NFL official admits link between brain disease CTE and football-related head trauma

An NFL official finally admitted links between American football and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. The NFL has distanced itself from CTE in recent years but the league has admitted for the first time the possible connection to the brain disease with football-related injuries and trauma, according to a top senior NFL official.

“The answer to that question is certainly yes,” Jeff Miller, the NFL’s senior vice president for healthy and safety, said in a discussion with US representatives, via ESPN.

“I think the broader point, and the one that your question gets to, is what that necessarily means, and where do we go from here with that information.”

Miller responded to a query by Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a congressman from Illinois’s 9th congressional district.

CTE is defined as a “progressive degenerative disease of the brain found in athletes (and others) with a history of repetitive brain trauma, including symptomatic concussions as well as asymptomatic subconcussive hits to the head,” according to Boston University CTE Center website.

The brain disease has been studied in recent years and is also linked to boxing and boxers who have reportedly suffered CTE since the early 1920s.

“We obviously are very interested in the center’s research on the long-term effects of head trauma in athletes,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said of the Boston University study in 2010.

“It is our hope that this research will lead to a better understanding of these effects and also to developing ways to help detect, prevent, and treat these injuries.”